Office Life – Page 5 – mardihumphreys.com

Stay in Your Lane

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“Hi. My name is Mardi and I’m a chronic over-thinker.” *Hi Mardi!*

Sometimes, my thoughts spin so fast they trip and fall into rabbit holes leading to people that (I think) need my help. Much like Glinda in Wicked, this does not make me “Popular.” (See what I did there?)

While commuting to and from work, cars constantly merge onto the highway. I usually stay in the middle, but there are plenty of people switching lanes. Sometimes they don’t use their signals. Sometimes they race each other to see who is going to get in front of whom. All the time I’m yelling, “Stay in your lane!” This reminds me that (figuratively speaking) I have a tendency to veer out of my lane and merge on top of those around me. There are three reasons I get all up in people’s business. Do any of these sound familiar?

I know better than they do. When someone is going through a situation I’ve been through, I assume their experience is identical to mine. You know what assuming does. (If not, ask me in the comments section below.) For example: Last fall, our daughter hunted a full-time job she could start after graduating from college this spring. Been there. Done that. Three companies recruited her. She accepted the first offer. I wanted her to wait and see if something better came along. Here’s what I should probably do instead: Listen; don’t talk. Ask questions; don’t lecture. Keep my opinions to myself. People ask for my advice when they are ready to hear it, not when I’m ready to give it.

I can save them. I’m a fixer. When I see someone making poor choices, I want to step in and correct their course. For example: A coworker was struggling with potential clients. I edited her pitch to increase her close rate. I even went with her to a few meetings and demonstrated. But, instead of viewing it as process improvement, she felt discouraged. Here’s what I should probably do instead: I need to resist the urge to fix, step in, or think my intervention will save the day. If I see a butterfly struggling to shed a cocoon, and I tear it open, do you know what happens? I kill the butterfly. The struggle strengthens it. Sometimes I just have to sit on my hands and not say everything I think.

I want their attention. I want to feel like I matter. For example: I’ve unpacked pallets of boxes weighing 20lbs each, stacked them in a storage unit, and sent pictures of my work to my manager. Here’s what I should probably do instead: Rein it in. If my work is consistently good, I will get a reputation as a valued member of the team. That is not to say I shouldn’t let my manager know I’m working hard, but weekly one-on-ones would be an appropriate time to do that.

Do you have trouble staying in your lane too? Please share your tips for self-restraint in the comments section below.

What Goes Around Comes Around

You’ve no doubt heard of paranoia, the feeling someone is out to hurt you. I’ve even blogged about it. But have you ever heard of pronoia? Psychologist Brian Little defines it as: “The delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being or saying nice things about you behind your back.”

Maybe it doesn’t have to be delusional. Could it be controlled and perceived as reaping what you sow? I’ve been on the receiving end of what I interpret as pronoia. Someone actually WAS plotting my well-being and saying nice things about me behind my back to someone with the power to change my situation.

Pronoia is a foreign concept because we’re much more likely to notice and discuss negative behaviors than positive ones. Why is that? Why is it we hear and repeat the negative? Why is that more attractive than hearing and repeating the positive?

Because it’s easy; it makes us feel important by being the one “in the know.” Even descriptions of negative impacting words are cooler than positive ones: Juicy gossip; spill the tea (gossip is NOT worth your T.E.A. btw) vs. sweet nothings and honeyed words. Wouldn’t we benefit more by training ourselves to choose to have hope, trust, and faith in our coworkers? Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. says doing so makes us more inclined to have a disposition of optimism and resilience and not just at work. He also lists the problems of taking it too far, so let’s balance pronoia with healthy skepticism.

Let’s look for hints of the best in our coworkers and entice it out of them. If someone is being difficult, let’s assume it’s a symptom of a problem and investigate instead of assuming she just has a difficult personality. Call it what you want: Karma, paying it forward, or just plain practicing kindness, but let’s steer our companies’ cultures toward empathy. It can only benefit the team.

If the Beatles were right, and the love you take is indeed equal to the love you make, will plotting our coworkers well-being increase our chances of being on the receiving end of pronoia? What does this look like at work? We can assume our teammate isn’t trying to dump an unwanted project on us, but just needs a hand. That attitude improves our mindsets more than hers. Remember to set boundaries though. For example: Once the project is doable for our coworker, stop helping. Be a pronoia instigator. Did someone in another department give us a viable sales lead? Send an email to his manager. Has the team hired a new member? Take her to lunch and answer her onboarding questions. Does the intern need help polishing his resume? Give it the once over.

Expecting the best from people doesn’t change them. It actually changes us. It causes us to treat our coworkers differently. Think of it as the Golden Rule on steroids.

What do you do at work to spread pronoia? Please share your suggestions in the comments section below.

Dirty Glasses

I can’t tell when my glasses get dirty. At some point, my vision gets clouded and I’m unaware of it. Smudged spectacles give me a false perception of reality. “Wait, that’s not a pile of dirt in the middle of the road, that’s a speck of dust on my glasses!” One minute I’m blissfully ignorant and the next I can see all the stuff coating my lenses: dog nose prints, eye lashes, dried hair spray droplets, etc. I should clean them every day, but I don’t. Just like my lenses collect grit and grime, so does my work life. I let my good habits slide, I ignore my bad ones, I rationalize my lazy behavior, perhaps throw myself a wee pity party, and before I know it, I’m in trouble. So, I have to stop and “clean my glasses.”

When I realize I’ve made a mistake, the first thing I do is figure out how I created this big mess. For example: Recently, I had a bad glucose test result.

Why? I miscalculated the number of carbohydrates in the serving of chicken enchiladas I ate.
How? I talked myself into believing the serving size was safe because I wanted to eat the yummy chicken enchiladas.
Now what? After the pity party, I buckle down. No chicken enchiladas for a while and the next time I make them, omit the tortillas.

I use this same pattern to recover after a mistake at work. For example: I ignored the auto-generated emails from the company’s ERP notifying me of undone tasks because I was pretty sure I did them and documented them, plus the ERP was famous for sending erroneous automated you-have-a-task-awaiting-you emails. I finally got a minute to recheck my documentation against the ignored messages and discovered an error on my part. How did I fix this? I asked myself the chicken enchilada questions:

Q: Why did I make the mistake?A: Overconfidence in my assumptions.
Q: How did I make the mistake? A: Quickly checking my documentation instead of paying attention.
Q: Now what? A: Do the tasks and set up a process for paying closer attention to comparing the tasks to my documentation.

Sometimes I need help cleaning my glasses. My mom says my dad is the best glasses cleaner she knows. Every time I’m at their house, I ask him to clean them. Sometimes at work I need help from someone I trust to be honest with me, in order to help me progress; more an accountability partner than a mentor. For example: A coworker who sees me surfing my social media during the time I’m usually making client calls and asks me about it; and who would appreciate my doing the same for her. Performance reviews are great for preventing long term crashing and burning. But for ensuring I’m on the right track before I talk myself into “eating the enchiladas,” an accountability partner is great for helping me “clean my glasses.”

Do you have an accountability partner at work? Please share how you help each other in the comments below.